On Art’s Unity

Maya Angelou (1928-2014)

If anyone doubts that there is more unity to visual art than is currently recognized or imagined, think about what Maya Angelou, the American poet, had to say about art in general. She was not given to hyperbole or exaggeration and chose her words carefully.

"All great artists draw from the same resource: the human heart,
which tells us that we are all more alike than we are unalike."

I don't know whether she understood how painting works (see recent post: Re-writing Writers on Art) but if we continue to think of visual art in historical terms as art history, we will never get to the heart of the matter where wisdom lies. True art, in my experience, is so completely in tune with itself (eg. Picasso with Poussin, or Michelangelo with Manet) that one could almost say that art paints itself through the sensitive minds of great craftsmen. Each is an individual but they work as one.